Last year, beloved Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek announced that he’s battling Stage IV pancreatic cancer. And a few months later after such a “positive” response to chemotherapy that even his doctors were surprised, Trebek shared that he was “near remission.”
Well, a year after his initial diagnosis, the 79-year-old game show host offered another encouraging update about his health and fight against cancer. In a video tweeted by Jeopardy!‘s official account, he noted the particularly low survival rate for pancreatic cancer and said the one-year survival rate for those in Stage IV is just 18 percent.
“I’m very happy to report I have just reached that marker,” he said in the video update.
A one-year update from Alex: pic.twitter.com/W9101suZeZ
— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) March 4, 2020
He continued:
“Now, I’d be lying if I said the journey had been an easy one. There were some good days but a lot of not-so-good days. I joked with friends that the cancer won’t kill me; the chemo treatments will. There were moments of great pain, days when certain bodily functions no longer functioned, and sudden, massive attacks of great depression that made me wonder if it really was worth fighting on.
“But I brushed that aside quickly because that would have been a massive betrayal — a betrayal of my wife and soulmate, Jean, who has given her all to help me survive. It would have been a betrayal of other cancer patients who have looked to me as an inspiration and a cheerleader of sorts of the value of living and hope. And it would certainly have been a betrayal of my faith in God and the millions of prayers that have been said on my behalf.
“You know, my oncologist tried to cheer me up the other day. He said, ‘Alex, even though the two-year survival rate is only 7 percent,’ he was certain that one year from now, the two of us would be sitting in his office, celebrating my second anniversary of survival.
“And you know something, if I — no. If we — because so many of us are involved in this same situation — if we take it just one day at a time with a positive attitude, anything is possible.”
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